On this day 105 years ago the Los Angeles Times carried a front-page story with the headlines “Weird Babel of Tongues”, “New sect of Fanatics is Breaking Loose”, “Wild Scene Last Night on Azusa Street”, “Gurgle of Wordless Talk by A Sister”. Four days previously, the Apostolic Faith Mission led by William Seymour, a son of former slaves, had moved into a former church at 312 Azusa Street and started conducting meetings.
Worship services were held spontaneously at all hours of day and night. People started flocking to Los Angeles to experience what was going on. There were men, women and children, old and young, black and white, Hispanic and Asian, rich and poor; with gatherings of typically between 300 and 1500 people. The services did not use any musical instruments; people spoke and prayed in tongues and swayed back and forth in prayer.
The Azusa Street gathering sent out missionaries around the world, and within two years the movement had spread to over 50 countries. This is often regarded as the birth of the Pentecostal movement, with various Pentecostal denominations being formed over the next decade, and the movement continuing to grow so that there are now more than 500 million Pentecostal Christians in the world, making them second only to the Roman Catholic church in size.